Interesting TV this season

Once upon a time, the TV that we got was completely dependant on what RTM would show us. Great stuff, the days of Combat and Hawaii Five-O. Something to watch over during dinner on a black and white 12" TV screen in the kitchen.

Then came colour and we added on shows such as the A-Team and MacGyver. If you really wanted to watch something, you had to record it, because if you missed it once, you'd miss it. I remember keeping an almost complete collection of Automan.

After that came the era of satellite TV. Now shows were on four or five times a week. It was when you got Friends twice a day, five days a week and Buffy ruled the airwaves. It didn't matter so much that you missed the odd show because you could always catch a repeat. You didn't have to set the video recorder on anymore. And I watched less terresterial TV than ever before.

Now TV watching is reaching another watershed. Three things have led to this: the increase in quality of TV shows, a faster Internet and the proliferation of DVD. I'm watching less and less broadcast TV and more stuff on the computer and other pre-recorded media. And we're talking TV series here, not movies.

As a result there is no better time than now to watch TV. The bulk of what I am going to discuss here is television from America because that's what's most easily available.

• The West Wing (Season 5): This has to be one of the best written shows in the world - until the end of season 4, that is. Aaron Sorkin, who had written all but two episodes up to that point, left the show, along with longtime director Thomas Schlamme. The bad thing about this is that the West Wing isn't what it used to be. The good thing is that watching it now makes you appreciate all the more how good the first four seasons were. Go out and buy DVDs from everything up to that point.
  
• The Shield (Season 1 - AXN, Tuesdays 10pm): Something happened to TV in the last decade. Shows like NYPD Blue that laid the foundation for stories that painted their lead characters off-white, but never has there been a stronger anti-hero than Vic Mackey, the cop who uses the system to his benefit and his alone. It's undeniable that The Shield thrives on the never-ending stories of corruption in the modern-day US police force but it does it with such style and with complete dedication to character-building that you can't help but root for the flawed.
  
• BUffy the Vampire Slayer (Season 7): Sarah Michelle Gellar decided to hang up her stake as the second coolest young adult on TV that also happened to kill the undead and an era came to an end. In the same way that the A-Team and the X-Files defined the 80's and 90's, Buffy and her friends should claim top honours for most influential pop TV of the first decade of the 21st Century. Joss Whedon, weaned on a life of sitcoms and English public schools, produced a scary show that didn't take itself too seriously and brought across important messages about life and death. Somewhere along the way it produced some of the funniest, best-written, best-produced television in recent memory. It's unfortunate that the final season didn't really match up to the best that it had to offer (seasons 2 and 3 in particular) but what it had was still better than most.
  
• Joan of Arcadia (Season 1): The pitch for this show was probably Touched By My So-Called Life. What do you get when an otherwise normal girl starts seeing God and begins talking to him? Well, it's not as bad as it sounds. In fact, it's pretty damn good and probably the most original TV this year. It's that God is unexpectedly hip and humourous that sells the show.
  
• Monk (Season 1, STAR TV, Tuesdays, 9pm): Tony Shalhoub is absolutely brilliant as the obsessive-compulsive detective Monk. It's his eccentricities and the way he sells it that makes this compulsive. And it actually gets better as the season carries on.
  
• Tru Calling (Season 1): OK, I have to be honest up front. If you're not a Eliza Dushku fan (aka the coolest young adult on TV that also happened to kill the undead), there is absolutely no point in watching this show. Don't watch it for the plot, or the dialogue, or anything else. Watch it for Eliza, or else don't watch it at all.
  
• Firefly (Season 1... or should it be "half"): It just goes to show that some people don't know when they have a good thing on their hands. Firefly comes from the pen of the inimitable Joss Whedon. Set upon the space trader Serenity, it follows the adventures of its crew and passengers. Filled with the trademark Whedonesque humour and character-building story arcs, it suffered the ignoble fate of being cancelled by the network even though its fans and critics alike thought the show was more than half good and deserved better. It's now available on DVD but the hope is that a feature film is in the works somewhere.